I had similar issues to yourself when migrating from screen.. the notion of 'panes' ~= 'windows' doesn't really work in some sense.. in screen when you split yo

I had similar issues to yourself when migrating from screen.. the notion of 'panes' ~= 'windows' doesn't really work in some sense.. in screen when you split you initiate an empty 'pane' (if that makes sense).. and then you put some content into it.. you can also move the 'windows' around to wherever you want.. but all within a single 'pane'-buffer however, in tmux.. what you have is like a whole series of pane containers.. these are called windows.. now, each window can have a name.. whilst a pane on its own does not.. you can fortunately 'join' and 'send' panes between windows.. also, another thing I tend to find useful is the ability to 'break' a 'pane' out've its current window and devote a full window to it.. the .tmux.conf bits you need are bind-key 'j' command-prompt -p "join pane from:" "join-pane -s '%%'" bind-key '@' command-prompt -p "send pane to:" "join-pane -t ':%%'" whilst :break-pane (or ^b ! by default) allows you to send a 'pane' away to its own window.. (apologies it that sounds awfully convoluted/confusing)